Main
Rich Pauloo, PhD
I’m a data scientist at LWA and spend most of my time in R automating ETL pipelines for sensor networks 📡, building Shiny Apps and dashboards 🖥, designing approaches with spatial statistics and hydrologic models, and generally wrangling lots and lots of data.
I have a PhD in Hydrology and my dissertation is titled ‘Emerging consequences of regional-scale aquifer depletion: data-driven and numerical models of well failure, basin salinization, and contaminant transport’ (my exit seminar can be viewed here)1. Early in my PhD, I found that I really enjoyed data science and programming, and I used these years to sharpen those skills. My published research includes NLP and network analysis2, spatial statistics3, and physical modeling of 3D, subsurface contaminant transport4.
I’m an #rstats nerd and automation/reproducibility fanatic. My favorite tools include tidyverse (dplyr, ggplot2, purrr), shiny, flexdashboard, plotly, DT, RMarkdown (for dashboards/reporting), sf, sp, raster, leaflet (for spatial data), and DBI for databases. A few projects I’m proud of include an R package to query water quality data 📦5, R data science curriculum 📚6, a dashboard that makes millions of water quality observations understandable 📈7, and a model that predicts the risk of wells going dry 💧8 funded by Microsoft’s AI for Earth Grant.
Education
PhD, Hydrogeology
University of California Davis
Davis, CA
2020 - 2015
- Published 5 scientific papers (3 first-author), see “Publications”.
- Won ~$153,000 in national, compeitive grants and awards from NASA, Microsoft AI for Earth, AGU, and others (see “Grants and Awards”).
B.S., Integrative Biology (minor in Conflict Resolution)
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
2011 - 2006
- Delivered departmental commencement speech9 to ~ 5,000 people.
Professional & Research Experience
Data Scientist + Hydrologist
Larry Walker Associates
Berkeley, CA
present - 2020
- Programmed automated ETL pipelines for ~180 real-time sensor networks and dashboards.
- Managed multiple six-figure contracts, scoped work, contributed to strategic marketing, and trained staff.
- Frequent client communication in diverse groups with competing aims.
- Ad hoc geostatistics, hydrologic modeling, remote sensing.
Data Scientist + Co-Founder
Water Data Lab
Remote
present - 2020
- Currently manage $105k in contracts.
- Build ETL pipeline and design strategic approach.
- Co-developed r4wrds.com
Data Engineer
UC Water
Davis, CA
2020 - 2018
- Built a data processing pipeline and web dashboard10 for real-time groundwater data via a wireless sensor network. View paper11.
Graduate Student Researcher
Fogg Lab
UC Davis
2020 - 2015
- Process large hydrologic datasets, 3D numerical groundwater flow and contaminant transport models, & network optimization models.
- Developed novel models of well failure, groundwater salinization, and contaminant transport in porous media.
- Regularly use R, Python, Git, Bash, MODFLOW, RW3D, Paraview, Illustrator, AWS, Linux, ArcGIS, Envi, LaTeX.
Data Lab Researcher
Computational Institute for Geodynamics (CIG)
UC Davis
2019 - 2018
- NLP, text mining, and network analysis in R on a corpus of ~600 PDFs.
- Developed an R Shiny dashboard12 to understand the corpus.
- Results published here13.
Teaching & Leadership Experience
Before pursuing my PhD, I spent 3 years teaching diverse audiences in environmental education. I worked in Yosemite, Thailand and the Marin Headlands, and honed skills in public speaking, interpersonal team development, group facilitation, and critical listening. Living with my coworkers in tight teams taught me patience and cooperation. During summers I guided expeditions in the wilderness and abroad with National Geographic.
Expedition Leader
National Geographic & Adventures Cross Country
Thailand
2016 - 2015
- Coordinated all aspects of multi-week international travel.
- Facilitated teambuilding, group dynamics, and cultural integration.
Site Manager & Educator/Guide
NatureBridge
Yosemite & the Marin Headlands, CA
2015 - 2013
- Coordinated with Operations to run a 200-student, 60 employee campus, which involved frequent public speaking.
- Lived and worked with a close team.
- Trained in wilderness guiding and backcountry safety.
- Served as primary liaison between the organization and clients.
Environmental Science Educator
San Mateo County Office of Education
La Honda, CA
2013 - 2012
- Designed cirriculum & taught science to diverse students.
- Worked and lived with a close team of educators.
- Frequent improvisational public speaking to large audiences.
Grants and Awards
Microsoft AI for Earth (national)
$37,571
N/A
2020
- gspdrywells.com14, AI-enabled forecasting of domestic well failure.
AGU Outstanding Student Presentation (national)
$200 and free 2020 registration
N/A
2019
- Awarded to the top 3-5% of presenters. View presentation15.
2019 California Water Data Challenge (statewide)
$1,500
N/A
2019
- Created calwaterquality.com16, a statewide data portal that integrates and visualizes massive water quality data sets, and auto-generates water quality reports for more than 2,000 California public water systems.
- Blog post17 about the project summarizing my motivation.
NASA Data Visualization Competition (national)
$1,400
N/A
2018
- Machine learning for domestic well failure18.
2018 California Water Data Challenge (statewide)
$1,500
N/A
2018
- Used large state databases to build and calibrate a predictive model19 of domestic well failure in California’s Central Valley.
NSF-GRFP Honorable Mention (national)
N/A
N/A
2016
NSF-IGERT in Climate Change, Water and Society (national)
$111,000
N/A
2015
Selected Publications, Posters, and Talks
Mean flow direction modulates non-Fickian transport in a heterogeneous alluvial aquifer-aquitard system20
Water Resources Research, 10.1029/2020WR028655
N/A
2021
- Pauloo, R. & Fogg, G.E. & Guo, Z. & Harter, T.
Development of a remote sensing based method to estimate changes in groundwater storage
Water Resources Research (in review)
N/A
2020
- Ahmed, A. & Pauloo, R. & Knight, R. & Melton, F.
A low cost, open source wireless sensor network for real-time groundwater monitoring21
N/A
2020
- Calderwood, A. & Pauloo, R. & Yoder, A. & Fogg, G.E.
Domestic Well Vulnerability to Drought Duration and Unsustainable Groundwater Management in California’s Central Valley22
Environmental Research Letters, 10.1088/1748-9326/ab6f10
N/A
2020
- Pauloo, R. & Dahlke, H. & Escriva-Bou, A. & Fencl, A. & Guillon, H. & Fogg, G.E.
Anthropogenic Basin Closure and Groundwater SALinization (ABCSAL)23
Journal of Hydrology, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125787
N/A
2020
- Pauloo, R. & Fogg, G.E. & Guo, Z. & Harter, T.
Assessing Impact of Outreach through Software Citation for Community Software in Geodynamics24
Computing in Science & Engineering, 10.1109/MCSE.2019.2940221
N/A
2019
- Hwang, L. & Pauloo, R. & Carlen, J.
Show me the Data25
California Water Data Summit
Davis, CA
2019
- Pauloo, R.
An Overview of Domestic Well Vulnerability in California’s Central Valley: Opportunities for Informed Risk Assessment26
California Environmental Protection Agency
Sacramento, CA
2019
- Pauloo, R.
Hydraulic gradients modulate non-Fickian transport in heterogeneous porous media27
American Geophysical Union
San Francisco, CA
2019
- Pauloo, R. & Fogg, G.E. & Guo, Z. & Henri, C.V.
Anthropogenic Basin Closure and Groundwater Salinization28
Chapman Conference on Aquifer Sustainability
Valencia, Spain
2019
- Pauloo, R. & Fogg, G.E. & Guo, Z. & Harter, T.
An Interactive Mapping Interface to the California Online State Well Completion Report Database29
UC Water Annual Meeting
Sacramento, CA
2018
- Pauloo, R.
The Past Present and Future: Long-term climate trends and water management history in California30
Water Scarcity in the West
Davis, CA
2015
- Pauloo, R. & Pinheiro, M.
Selected Data Science Writing
Install RStudio Server on Microsoft Azure31
N/A
N/A
2020
Automating R scripts on Linux with cron32
N/A
N/A
2020
Using Twilio to Text Myself After Long Running Jobs33
N/A
N/A
2019
Race to the Bottom34
Exploratory data analysis and science journalism California well construction trends.
N/A
2019
Text Analysis of the Mueller Report35
Text mining and sentiment analysis.
N/A
2019
Installing the R kernel in Jupyter Lab36
How-to guide visited ~2,000 times per month.
N/A
2018
Certifications
Wilderness First Responder
N/A
National Outdoor Leadership School
N/A
Software Carpentry Instructor
N/A
Software Carpentry
N/A
Links
- my exit seminar can be viewed here]https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2020-exit-seminar/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/cig/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/well-failure/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/vhgr/
- https://caopenwater.github.io/sdwisard/
- https://r4wrds.com/
- http://calwaterquality.com/
- https://www.gspdrywells.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBnvVL6XQTw&t=2s
- https://www.richpauloo.com/project/lcsn/
- https://doi.org/10.3390/w12041066
- https://richpauloo.shinyapps.io/cig_nlp
- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8827910
- https://www.gspdrywells.com
- https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2019-agu/
- http://calwaterquality.com
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/cawdc-2019/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2018-nasa/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/well-failure/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/vhgr/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/lcsn/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/well-failure/
- ABCSAL]https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/abcsal/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/cig/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2019-water-data-summit/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2019-cal-epa/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/talk/2019-agu/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/publication/abcsal/
- https://shiny.lawr.ucdavis.edu/shiny/oswcrd/
- https://speakerdeck.com/richpauloo/weathering-change
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/azure/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/crontabs/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/textme/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/race-to-the-bottom/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/mueller/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/jupyter/
- https://www.richpauloo.com/post/infer/